Belgian Autumn. A Confabulated History.

In the autumn of 1985, a series of violent and bloody robberies of Belgian supermarkets abruptly came to an end. A group of unknown criminals, referred to as ‘The Gang of Nivelles’, was held responsible for these heinous acts. Between March 1982 and November 1985, the Gang of Nivelles committed twenty-three robberies and other crimes. In all, twenty-eight people were killed. My father was one of them. The excessive violence used by the gang, was out of all proportion to the modest loot of 175,000 euros. In spite of a thorough police investigation, a file of almost three million pages, found evidence and witness accounts, the perpetrators were never apprehended. This period of terror and violence will remain one of the darkest pages in Belgian history.